Imposition Software Puts JDF Admin Link In Reach

"It brings the JDF link from administration to production within the reach of everyone," Alan Dixon, technical director of Positive Focus commented when introducing Preps 5.1 from Creo.

"It brings the JDF link from administration to production within the reach of everyone," Alan Dixon, technical director of Positive Focus commented when introducing Preps 5.1 from Creo.

Preps is Creo's imposition tool and is a part of both Creo's Prinergy and Brisque, as well as appearing in Agfa Apogee and Fuji Rampage workflows.

Positive Focus, which distributes the Creo Production planning software in the UK and Ireland, showed a beta version of Preps 5.1 at the MIS 2005 event, and will be launching it on Stand M477 at Northprint in April.

"This upgrade, free to existing Preps 5 users, gives simple import of single-section job intent from the management information system (MIS) without intermediate programs.

If your needs are more complex you still have the option of using Upfront or Metrix for the additional features they offer, but for a large number of our Preps users this really is JDF for the masses." Preps is available for Windows platforms as well as Mac OSX, so getting the JDF file from the MIS to the Preps workstation is no problem said the company.

Many mainstream MIS providers already offer JDF job intent export in their current software and most others are near to having a working implementation.

Creo has also introduced a two-tier upgrade scheme for Preps.

Versions of Preps Plus and Pro from 4.0 can now be upgraded for GBP 747, while earlier versions can be brought up to date for GBP 1,123.

Preps 5 introduced Smartmarks, said to cut the time needed to create and edit templates, and also brought compatibility with Quark 6 and 6.1 and with Adobe Acrobat 6 files.

The Mac version is OS 10.3 (Panther) native only.

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